TRENTON - Three Central Jersey school districts are joining a legal fight to challenge the state's public school funding formula.

In a press conference Friday afternoon at the Statehouse, Kennedy Greene, the superintendent of schools in Newton and the president-elect of the N.J. Association of School Administrators, announced that 10 school districts, including Middlesex Borough, Jamesburg and North Brunswick, are supporting legal action if they are unsuccessful in challenging the state's formula for funding public schools.

That action contends that 96 school districts, including several throughout Central Jersey, are both "overtaxed and severely under-aided."

According to Greene, those districts receive less than 70 percent of the state aid they are entitled to and are taxed at more than 100 percent of their "fair share."

In all, he said, those communities are shorted $739 million in state aid for the 2017-2018 fiscal year and charge their property owners more than $475 more than their fair share of taxes.

Particularly hard hit by the funding formula are small school districts such as Middlesex Borough, Jamesburg and Bound Brook, which have limited property tax bases.

"According to the state aid formula, the Middlesex Borough School District should have received $13,876,528 in state aid this year, but actually received only $9,122,803, which resulted in a shortfall of $4,753,725," Superintendent of Schools Linda Madison said.

"We received only 66 percent of the aid our district is entitled to receive. That burden must be shifted to the local taxpayers and so Middlesex Borough residents pay 14 percent more than their local fair share, which puts a tremendous strain on them. "

Those high taxes are one of the reasons why taxpayers often balk at backing referendum votes to fund capital projects, she said.

"In fact, earlier this school year, the Board of Education went to the voters with a referendum designed to repair and improve school facilities to meet their children's growing educational needs and it was rejected by a 7-1 margin," Madison said.

"The residents cited that it was just too great a tax burden on top of already very high taxes."

In Jamesburg, Superintendent of Schools Brian Betze said the lack of adequate state funding has adversely impacted the school district which has a quickly changing enrollment.

"Over the past seven years, the Jamesburg Public Schools have had issues meeting the needs of our rapidly expanding ELS (English as Second Language) population," Betze said.

"For the fist time, more than half of our students are Hispanic and yet our ability to employ additional ELS and bi-lingual teachers has been stagnant due to no increase in funding."

The shortfall in funding has also prompted drastic cuts in spending.

In the past seven years, Betze said, no new library books or textbooks have been purchased. Two media specialists have been cut and media centers in both schools have been closed.

In addition, the instrumental band program has been cut and the art and vocal music programs have been reduced. And there are no after-school clubs because of the lack of funds, he said.

Studies have found that Bound Brook may be the most "underfunded" school district in the state.

"Our district is at a significant disadvantage as we are not able to spend at least up to the adequacy level for the State of New Jersey," Bound Brook Superintendent of Schools Daniel Gallagher said previously.

"Districts like ours that also tax their residents above the local fair share, are in a no-win situation. The taxpayers in our districts are overburdened, and yet we still don't have the resources to fund an adequate budget."

Changing the public school funding formula will be one of the first challenges new Gov. Phil Murphy will have after he takes office next week and prepares his first budget.